How is Avatar Complexity Doing?

More and more viewers are adopting the latest Linden additions to the viewer. The RLViewer just added the Avatar Complexity feature. So, more and more people are noticing the pop up messages generated by the Avatar Complexity feature. Merchants are starting to respond to the feature also. I suspect for now that concern is anticipatory rather than reactive.

Never Stop Dreaming.

Never Stop Dreaming

I have always suspected the majority of Second Life™ users have a level of concern about the amount of lag they add to the system and take some steps to reduce it. Of course most of us want to avoid lag. A few entitlement types put off on the Lab. But, I think that is a small percentage.  Continue reading

AvaStar 2.0-Alpha-3 Update

AvaStar, the Blender add-on for Second Life animation, has released a new update. The details are here: Avastar-2.0-alpha_3_blender-2-77. This is not a version for regular use. It requires that you use the Project Bento viewer to upload the animations made with it. You can upload to either the main or preview grids.

This release has a new avatar and the latest Project Bento skeleton. I suspect that there is a free updated skeleton somewhere. But, I have not yet gone looking for it.

There are some bugs in this version. Read the article at Machinimatrix for the details. Most of the problems have work-arounds.

 

Seraphim HUD

Strawberry Singh has recently released a video on the Seraphim HUD and website. If you are into Second Life shopping and like to catch the shopping events you want this HUD.

If you are a merchant participating in events you are going to want to figure out how to get your event added into the HUD. Jump to the SeraphimSL website. I was curious how they find out about all these events.  Continue reading

Second Life: What is the BEST use of Outfits?

I use outfits… reading in the forum I find there is a mix of people using and not using and sort of using outfits. With the Visual Outfit Browser feature being added to the viewer, I wonder if it will change how people will use outfits? I’ll get into LAG and USE.

inventory

inventory

After a bit over 8 years playing the Second Life™ inventory game (See: Is Second Life a Game?), I’ve tried a bunch of different inventory tactics. I am finding how I use inventory and outfits evolves with time. Am I winning? Maybe. I see that ‘evolving’ seems to be true for others too. So, how does one make the best use of inventory and outfits? Is there a lag factor from inventory?  Continue reading

Second Life Viewer Update 2016 w23

Last night I wrote my update for servers and viewers for week #23 and scheduled it for 6AM this morning. This morning at 7 AM I find new viewers on the RC and Project Viewers page.

Sea-sight

Sea-sight

New Project Viewers

Second Life Project VLC Media Plugin Viewer version 4.0.6.316087 – This viewer completely removes the need for QuickTime… well, maybe more accurately… removes the code that tried to run an Apple abandoned and broken QuickTime.  Continue reading

Second Life: Project Bento Update 2016 w22

May be the universe is trying to tell me something… I had a heck of a time getting to the UG meeting again this week. I was logging into ADITI early, only to find out the meeting had moved to AGNI. Logging into AGNI I got a message that my voice chat could not be connected to the voice server. O.O

After 30+ minutes of trying I finally got voice working. Still I have most of the meeting in this video. The first 30 minutes is a mix of video and stills none of which is in sync with the voice. Things come back together at about the 30 minute mark.

Fortunately Aki Shichiroji was recording voice. She was late getting to the altered meeting location and missed the first 10 minutes or so. So, maybe it’s not just me. Whatever, she gave me a copy and I used the first 20+ minutes or so that I missed. You can see Aki sitting on a dragon in the video.

The first 10 minutes or so of the meeting is missing. I am hoping Inara has it. I don’t see it posted yet.

I started noticing a viewer render problem at about the 32 minutes in (TM32). I wasn’t sure what was happening. Only Bento avatars with lots of bone displacement and weighting to the new bones are demonstrating the problem. So the horses and dragon are the prime examples in my video.

Talking to Whirly Fizzel clued me to BUG-10991[Bento] Mesh rigged to the new joints either partly disappears, collapses or melts when viewing that avatar as an imposter. So, if you need a work-around check the steps to reproduce the glitch and then do the opposite, which would basically be turn off avatar impostors.

Project Bento Update w22

They surprised me! Project Bento, server side, arrived at the main grid Tuesday. Torley Linden has posted about the Lab enabling the project on the main grid. See: Project Bento Testing Is Now Live on the Main Grid!

This is a testing release. You will need the Project Bento Viewer to upload animations and meshes, and to view them without distortion. Bento mesh weighted to the new bones looks horribly distorted in non-Bento viewers. Expect to see lots of questions in the forum about how to fix the problem.

Just send them to the Linden announcement… or here.